Desire and the green cure

I USED TO feel bad about mindless consumerism but not any more.
The green movement has come to my rescue. With every purchase, I
can now enjoy the warm glow of helping develop environmentally
sound practices.

There's my new briefcase, for example. It is shiny and luxurious
and its purchase has allowed me to throw my old one into the bin.
But there's no eco-guilt for me.

According to the manufacturer, the leather in my briefcase was
stained using "extracts of bark and seeds collected from renewable
sources in the forests of Africa and India". The work was all done
by "traditional artisans", all of them using "sustainable
practices" in the "old saddler tradition". There's not a lot of
detail on the leather but, based on the tone of the pamphlet, I'm
pretty sure the cows would have been volunteers.

I feel I now deserve some sort of medal just for handing over my
credit card.

I'm not alone in falling for this sort of sales pitch. People
are always looking for an excuse to consume more and the latest
excuse - bizarrely - is environmentalism.

Let's call it "greensumerism". Forget the simple mantra of "less
is more"; with the help of the green movement you can now indulge
in a frenzy of consumerism, with each luxury purchase excused by
the idea that you are helping the development of the "green"
sector.

People will ditch a perfectly good car in order to import the
latest hybrid eco-model and expect to be praised for their
sensitivity. Magazines like Vogue Living are now full of
these luxurious holiday houses - temples to excess and
over-consumption - which the owners claim as their personal
contribution to sustainability.

There's even a new category of glossy magazine - selling the
green lifestyle. Rarely do these magazines suggest we should simply
consume less; the advertisers wouldn't care for that idea. Instead,
each month brings us thousands of new ways for us all to consume
our way to a better planet.

The latest convert to this idea is the NSW Water Minister,
Nathan Rees, who now claims his dreaded desalination plant is
actually terrific news for the environment. The ebullient new
minister ran through the logic this week: since the power used by
the plant will come from wind farms, the plant will give
much-needed certainty to the industry, and thus assist in the
development of the whole sustainability sector. Thus the planet is
better off with the Sydney desalination plant than it would have
been without it.

It's a classic example of the "greensumerist" logic: the more we
consume, the better the outcome. Presumably if we doubled the size
of the desal plant, the environment would be even better off. I'd
suggest the idea to Rees but he might just do it.

With this much wind emanating from the young minister, you
wonder why they don't connect him directly to the turbines. That,
at least, would reduce the carbon costs of building his 25 new wind
farms.

Of course, wind power is better than coal-fired power; but the
real achievement comes when you use new wind power to replace
existing coal power. To have newly created power and then splurge
it on newly created demand is just another way of marching on the
spot. We're like a fat man who has decided to double his eating and
so ups his exercise level to match. He may not get any fatter. But
he's certainly not going to get thin.

The truth is that we can't consume our way out of trouble. If we
are going to buy something anyway, then we should try to buy a
product that's been made sustainably. But let's have the honesty to
admit the truth: every product adds to our carbon footprint, even
products that label themselves part of the "sustainability
industry".

The greenest decision of all usually involves buying nothing at
all. It involves hanging onto an old car for a few more years;
making do with an old briefcase; eschewing that second or third
luxurious holiday house.

The really radical response to global warming - the one you
won't find in any of the glossy green magazines - would be to
rehabilitate the concept of thrift. The advertisers would hate it,
but we could once more celebrate it as a virtue - in just the way
it used to be celebrated by generations of Australians.

"Greensumerism" is trying to fool us into believing we can save
the planet by upping our consumption, rather than trying to reduce
it. It also tries to salve our conscience - inviting us to buy
carbon credits, instead of changing our behaviour; or, like Rees,
telling us we can feel OK about being profligate with power, as
long as it's green.

At best, "greensumerism" leaves us like that fat man, running
ever faster on the spot as we continue to stuff our faces. The
ultimate outcome, as with the fat man's, won't be pretty.

All the green advertising and political speeches may give us a
warm inner glow.

But the real achievement will come when we reduce that other
warm glow: the one experienced by the planet.